Asleep in the Light…

I know — what does that even mean – asleep in the light???

In Ephesians 5:14, Paul says “…Awake sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. Therefore, be careful how you walk, not as unwise men, but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil.”

I believe he’s talking about our focus.  What are we focusing on?

Let’s take a little trip.  Remember this morning when you were driving to work – how many people in cars did you pass? How many were texting? (Ok, don’t answer that one…) What did they look like? Did you hit mostly red lights or green?  What intersection were you at when you hit the red one?

If you’re like most of us we can’t answer most of those questions.  We’re on auto-pilot – focused on the things that are most important to us at that time.

Our brain has an amazing ability to focus.  God actually placed a filter in our brains that filters out over 2,000,000 (that’s two million) bits of information per second.  He designed our brains to register 5 to 7 things at one time.  Can you imagine if our brains actually tried to process every single piece of information as we were driving this morning?  We’d be a puff of smoke!

God also gave us the ability to choose what 5 to 7 things we set our minds on.  What if 3 of those 5 are distractions?  What if all 5 are? What did we miss?  What important matters did we not pay attention to?

Let’s look at nature again. The eagle has a tremendous ability to concentrate.  Once an eagle sets its eyes on its prey, it is totally focused; no distractions. Its eyesight is so well developed, it can even see its prey up to two miles away – while flying.  At two miles away if he even flinched at anything else, do you think he would succeed in getting dinner?

Look at this picture – look at his eyes:

Focused!

But that’s not all.  Eagles have a solution in their eyes that hardens as they grow. As a young eagle begins flying it learns where “home” is located, and as it gets older this solution forms a casing over the eye that causes a low level pain when it’s flying in the wrong direction. They have a built in compass.

Which way are you flying?  How many believers are living in low level pain, but it’s been there so long we’ve become numb to it? That’s not God’s best!

But you might say, “Yeah, ’cause He didn’t put that solution in my eyes!”  And I suggest to you that He did put something in you that works exactly the same — the Holy Spirit.  The problem is that we’re so busy running on auto-pilot because we chose 5 to 7 distractions to focus on, and we forget to ask the Holy Spirit which way to go!

The North pole has a magnetic field that always pulls a compass needle north.  The Holy Spirit has a magnetic field that will always pull us to God’s will and His best for us!

But is the Holy Spirit one of our 5 to 7??  The “light” is always on, but are we sleeping??

I like pictures and I was looking for some for this post when I came across the one below.  At first I passed on by, but then the Holy Spirit prompted me to look again.  What is the enemy stealing from us because we’re focused on the wrong 5 to 7???

“…Awake sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. Therefore, be careful how you walk, not as unwise men, but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil.”